to experience a very extraordinary sensation.  He felt that he was not alone.  The immense chamber seemed full of presences.  He could see nothing, but he felt them all about him.  The place was thickly populated, but the population was invisible.  Everything looked as empty as it had looked when the door was first thrown open, and yet it was really full of ghostly palpitating life, crowded with the spirits of bygone men and women who had held stately revels there three hundred years before.  He was not frightened, but a sense of awe crept over him, rooting him to the spot and imparting a rapt expression to his face.  Did he hear anything?  Wasn’t there a faint rustling sound somewhere in the air behind him?  No.  It must have been his fancy.  Everything was as silent as the grave.

He turned and saw St Aubyn close beside him.  “The place is haunted!” he exclaimed in a husky voice.

“What makes you think so?” asked St Aubyn, without any intonation of surprise.

“I feel it,” he replied.

“Come out,” said the other abruptly.  “It’s curious you should say that.  Other people seem to have felt the same.  I’m not so sensitive myself.  You’re looking pale.  Let’s go into the library and have a cup of tea.”

The hot stimulant revived him, and he was soon talking at his ease again.  But the curious impression remained.  It seemed to him as if he had had an experience whose effects would not be easily shaken off.  He had seen no ghosts, but he had felt them, and that was quite enough.  The sensation he had undergone was unmistakable; the hall was full of ghosts, and he had been conscious of their presence.  This, then, was apparently what Lubin had alluded to.  Oh, it was all real enough—­there was no room left for any doubt whatever.

It was a quarter to five when he took leave of his entertainer, responding warmly to an injunction to look in again whenever he felt disposed.  He walked very thoughtfully homewards, revolving many questions in his busy brain.  How much he had seen and learnt since he left home that morning!  Worlds of beauty, of art, of intellect had dawned upon his consciousness; a world of mystery too.  Even now, tramping along the road, he felt a different being.  Even now he imagined the presence of unseen entities—­walking by his side, it might be, but anyhow close to him.  Was it so?  Could it be that he really was surrounded by intelligences that eluded his physical senses and yet in some mysterious fashion made their existence known?

At last he arrived at the stile leading into the meadow, and prepared to clamber over.  Then he hesitated.  Why?  He could not tell.  A queer, invincible repugnance to cross that stile suddenly came over him.  The meadow looked fresh and green, and the road—­hot, dusty, and white—­was certainly not alluring; besides, he longed to saunter along the grass by the river and think over his experiences.  But something